My Baby Wants to Party at 3am!

Is your little one waking up in the middle of the night?

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No no, not like that. I mean like really waking up. Waking up and staying up. For hours.

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If you’re the parent of a baby who’s dealing with segmented sleep, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This isn’t the brief middle of the night wake up where you may go in and comfort for a few minutes and baby is back to sleep. This is a full-blown 3:00am, I want to party wake up.

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You may have heard it referred to as segmented sleep or split nights, and it describes a situation where your little one sleeps for a long stretch, then wakes up happy and energetic in the middle of the night, and stays that way for an hour or more.

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This isn’t a new or unnatural phenomenon. Back before the widespread use of the light bulb, people would regularly sleep for a few hours, wake up for another hour or two, then go back to sleep. Nowadays, however, the vast majority of us go to sleep at night and, hopefully, close our eyes and sleep straight through until morning.

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But…maybe your baby didn’t get the memo??  Let’s take a quick look at why this happens and then we’ll get to how to solve the problem.

There are two major drivers when it comes to sleep. There’s our circadian rhythm, which is our body clock and our natural tendency to fall asleep when it’s dark and wake up when it’s light, and then there’s our homeostatic sleep drive, commonly known as sleep pressure, which builds up over the time we’re awake.

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So ideally, over the course of the day, sleep pressure builds up, then at bedtime, when the pressure hits the sweet spot, baby puts her head down and goes to sleep. As that sleep pressure begins to subside, circadian rhythm takes over and baby stays asleep until morning.

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In the case of a split night, we could be looking at one of two reasons why they’re waking up. Baby’s not getting to bed early enough, OR… baby’s going to bed too early.

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Sorry!  I know this is a conflicting explanation, but stay with me.

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If baby’s getting to bed too late, if too much sleep pressure has built up, the brain has an instinctive response that says, “Hey, you’re tired but you’re not sleeping. I’m guessing that’s because there’s a dangerous threat around, so we’d better get ready to run,” and then starts upping the cortisol levels as it goes into fight or flight mode.

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The brain means well, but it’s a little behind the times on our need for lion alerts. So this can make it tough for baby to get to sleep at bedtime, since that cortisol’s got them a little bit hyped up.  It can also cause a full wake up at the end of a sleep cycle, which commonly happens around 2 or 3 in the morning. Ugh.

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If this is the case, you’re one of the lucky ones. Treat this like any other night time wake up, reassure baby that it’s still bedtime, comfort her and let her get back to sleep on her own, and consider moving bedtime up a bit over the course of a few nights.

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But then there’s the alternate scenario. What if baby’s getting to bed too early.

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In a situation where baby’s getting lots of quality daytime sleep and going to bed early, it’s possible that there’s not enough sleep pressure built up to keep baby sleeping until their circadian rhythm takes over and helps them sleep through the rest of the night. And now that there isn’t as much sleep pressure, and their circadian rhythm doesn’t have the horsepower to get them to sleep on their own, suddenly they’re up and active for an hour (or three!) while that pressure builds back up.

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Now, I’m all about early bedtimes. Too little sleep is a much bigger problem than too much. But if your baby’s experiencing this kind of split-night sleep, it’s worth looking at their schedule and doing a little finetuning.  This is where it is important to look at wake times- how long your baby is awake between sleeps.  How many naps they are getting and how much total daytime sleep is happening.  All of these things should be age appropriate and will determine the appropriate bedtime.  Contact me for a handy guide to help you with this.

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I know that this can all start to sound like a complicated math problem, but the more you understand where to make those minor adjustments from day to day, the better your baby will sleep, and the less they’ll run into these regressions, setbacks, and interruptions.

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One last thing to consider if you’re getting ready to tackle this situation- this is not likely to be an overnight fix. Once baby has gotten into this habit, getting them out of it can take some time. Like any attach mentor dependency, overcoming it is an incremental process and it’s likely to meet with some push-back, so if and when things get tough, remember your goal. You’re giving your little one the skills they need to sleep soundly through the night, and that contributes to their well-being in so many different ways. Stay consistent, be patient, and before too long your baby and you will both been joying full nights of deep, restful sleep.

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